Most people know they should cut calories and exercise more to trim down, but there’s now significant scientific evidence that another critical component to maintaining your natural normal weight is avoiding sleep deprivation, sleep scientists say.

“There is no doubt that insufficient sleep promotes hunger and appetite, which can cause excessive food intake resulting in weight gain,” says Eve Van Cauter, director of the Sleep, Metabolism and Health . She has spent 15 years studying the topic.

Here are six specific ways sleep deprivation is linked to weight gain.

When you are running on low energy, you automatically go for a bag of potato chips or other comfort foods.

Ghrelin is the hormone that tells you when to eat, and when you are sleep-deprived, you have more ghrelin.

Leptin is the hormone that tells you to stop eating, and when you are sleep deprived, you have less leptin.

The more sleep-deprived you are, the higher your levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which increases your appetite.

When you’re sleep deprived, the mitochondria in your cells that digest fuel start to shut down.

Your body goes into survival mode. Sleeplessness can fool your body into thinking you’re in danger. Your metabolism slows because your body is trying to maintain its resources, and it also wants more fuel.

The Scariest Part of Halloween is the sugar. The amount of candy consumed on Halloween may seem downright spooky, especially if you’re a dentist, nutritionist or health-conscious parent.Almost every child in the USA will have candy on Halloween, and about half of the adults will eat some. That compares to 24% of all adults and kids who have candy on a typical day.

The small snack sizes might seem harmless, but they are loaded with sugar! Take a look at the numbers below!

Did you know that your breasts have their own unique microbiome? A study has shown for the first time that breast cancer has been linked to a decrease in bacterial diversity.

Bacteria that live in the body, known as the microbiome, influence many diseases. Most research has been done on the “gut” microbiome, or bacteria in the digestive tract.

Researchers have uncovered differences in the bacterial composition of breast tissue of healthy women vs. women with breast cancer. The research team has discovered for the first time that healthy breast tissue contains more of the bacterial species Methylobacterium, a finding which could offer a new perspective in the battle against breast cancer.

This study took the first step in this totally new direction of cancer research by showing that healthy breast tissue has a different bacterial composition than cancerous tissue. They hope this will help them find a way to detect the disease earlier and diagnose it more efficiently.

This study suggests that there are certain bacteria that prevent cancer and certain bacteria that seem to be “pro-cancer.” The future of cancer prevention and treatment could have a lot to do with targeting these bacteria and creating an environment in the body that promotes healthy bacteria.

One of the authors of the study, Charis Eng, M.D., Ph.D.—chair of Cleveland Clinic’s Genomic Medicine Institute and director of the Center for Personalized Genetic Healthcare said “In our wildest dreams, we hope we can use microbiomics right before breast cancer forms and then prevent cancer with probiotics or antibiotics.”